Bitcoin and Ethereum Energy Consumption
GenerEOS reports that Bitcoin, which is widely known to have an extremely demanding proof-of-work (PoW) mining algorithm, consumes 73.1 TWh of power annually — “the same amount of electricity as the nation of Argentina,” according to the article. Whether Bitcoin’s power use will continue to rise is uncertain, but its consumption has increased over the past year.
Meanwhile, Ethereum consumes about 18.96 TWh of energy per year, about a quarter of what Bitcoin consumes. Ethereum is mined through PoW, just like Bitcoin is, but consumes less energy to confirm each transaction. Ethereum’s Casper update, which will introduce a proof-of-stake mechanism, will render mining obsolete and drop Ethereum’s power consumption even further
